Pedro Nunes, Latin Petrus Nonius (born 1502, Alcácer do Sal, Port.—died Aug. 11, 1578, Coimbra) mathematician, geographer, and the chief figure in Portuguese nautical science, noted for his studies of the Earth, including the oceans.

Nunes was professor of mathematics at Lisbon and Coimbra and became royal cosmographer in 1529, when Spain was disputing the position of the Spice Islands and maps did not agree in their longitude. He devoted himself to such problems as well as to maps and map projections. He went to Spain in 1538 but returned to Portugal in 1544 to become a leading authority on the new discoveries of Spain and Portugal.

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...the meridians of a sphere at a constant nonright angle. Thus, it may be seen as the path of a ship sailing always oblique to the meridian and directed always to the same point of the compass. Pedro Nunes, who first conceived the curve (1550), mistakenly believed it to be the shortest path joining two points on a sphere (see great circle route). Any ship following such a course...